Comments on: 4 Reasons Not To Rely On Market Research Alone http://onlinemarketerblog.com/2008/05/4-reasons-not-to-rely-on-market-research-alone/ If Copyblogger and JaffeJuice had a bad-ass baby Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:16:51 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: Quantitative research http://onlinemarketerblog.com/2008/05/4-reasons-not-to-rely-on-market-research-alone/comment-page-1/#comment-2345 Quantitative research Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:50:49 +0000 http://onlinemarketer.wordpress.com/?p=125#comment-2345 “There is no reason to run a focus group at the mall or pay for phone interviews. Almost every demographic is well represented online. The results are more accurate and it costs far less. Why would you do it the old way?” Same thing, couldn't agree more. And I can tell you that people feel better when replying online, on their own and they will tell you the truth! Nice article though! “There is no reason to run a focus group at the mall or pay for phone interviews. Almost every demographic is well represented online. The results are more accurate and it costs far less. Why would you do it the old way?”

Same thing, couldn’t agree more. And I can tell you that people feel better when replying online, on their own and they will tell you the truth!

Nice article though!

]]> By: Phil Dunn http://onlinemarketerblog.com/2008/05/4-reasons-not-to-rely-on-market-research-alone/comment-page-1/#comment-167 Phil Dunn Thu, 15 May 2008 04:04:57 +0000 http://onlinemarketer.wordpress.com/?p=125#comment-167 "There is no reason to run a focus group at the mall or pay for phone interviews. Almost every demographic is well represented online. The results are more accurate and it costs far less. Why would you do it the old way?" Couldn't agree more, DJ. I've been preaching to my clients - for months now - that their cheapest way to test promos, offers and new messages is to run a test on Google AdWords. If you can get a sample of 200-400 impressions, the data is pretty dang good. Granted, AdWords is a biased crowd for a lot of different reasons..however, it works well in certain niches (technology, for one, where users are trained on google in the first place.) “There is no reason to run a focus group at the mall or pay for phone interviews. Almost every demographic is well represented online. The results are more accurate and it costs far less. Why would you do it the old way?”

Couldn’t agree more, DJ. I’ve been preaching to my clients – for months now – that their cheapest way to test promos, offers and new messages is to run a test on Google AdWords. If you can get a sample of 200-400 impressions, the data is pretty dang good. Granted, AdWords is a biased crowd for a lot of different reasons..however, it works well in certain niches (technology, for one, where users are trained on google in the first place.)

]]> By: Robert Gordman http://onlinemarketerblog.com/2008/05/4-reasons-not-to-rely-on-market-research-alone/comment-page-1/#comment-166 Robert Gordman Fri, 09 May 2008 19:50:38 +0000 http://onlinemarketer.wordpress.com/?p=125#comment-166 Market research can provide actionable information if only a company's Core and Must-Have Customers are surveyed. (Core Customers are a company’s most loyal customers who are willing to pay a fair resources. Must-Have Customers are people who could become Core Customers, but they currently do business with the competition.) To find out exactly why Core and Must-Have Customers value a company’s products or services they have to be asked through research. There’s a huge difference between mediocre research and great research. Mediocre research yields “nice-to-know” information but nothing relevant that can be acted on. Great research is insightful and provides the basis for effective action. It’s extremely important to confine research to Core and Must-Have Customers. Asking anyone else will taint the data and could send the company down the completely wrong—and potentially very dangerous—path. Be sure to ask “knock-out” questions as early in the process as possible. Getting all the way through a survey, only to find out that the person isn’t a Core or Must-Have Customer, is a tremendous waste of time and resources. In order to formulate the questions, it’s critical to have a good idea of the kind of answers that the research is looking for. For instance, a local company selling high-end electronics wants to know how to attract customers away from a national big box electronics company. With that as the goal, the research questions can be structured in a way that will produce information that can actually be used. Market research can provide actionable information if only a company’s Core and Must-Have Customers are surveyed. (Core Customers are a company’s most loyal customers who are willing to pay a fair resources. Must-Have Customers are people who could become Core Customers, but they currently do business with the competition.)

To find out exactly why Core and Must-Have Customers value a company’s products or services they have to be asked through research. There’s a huge difference between mediocre research and great research. Mediocre research yields “nice-to-know” information but nothing relevant that can be acted on. Great research is insightful and provides the basis for effective action.

It’s extremely important to confine research to Core and Must-Have Customers. Asking anyone else will taint the data and could send the company down the completely wrong—and potentially very dangerous—path. Be sure to ask “knock-out” questions as early in the process as possible. Getting all the way through a survey, only to find out that the person isn’t a Core or Must-Have Customer, is a tremendous waste of time and resources.

In order to formulate the questions, it’s critical to have a good idea of the kind of answers that the research is looking for. For instance, a local company selling high-end electronics wants to know how to attract customers away from a national big box electronics company. With that as the goal, the research questions can be structured in a way that will produce information that can actually be used.

]]>